Thursday, September 27, 2007

Philosopher of science, Ian Hacking, discusses anti-Darwinism vs. the defenders of evolutionary theory in The Nation. It's a refreshing piece. Although my own thinking in philosophy is heavily influenced by evolution, I avoid the so-called debate between Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. and anti-evolutionists and creationists. The debate is shrill on all sides, idiotic in some cases, and generally pointless. Of course, as I've noted elsewhere (and here and here and here), intelligent design theory is bunk. Not only is it bunk, but it's regurgitative. Much of it involves hashing over the same old debates and positions that have played out since the Middle Ages. The debate requires one either to be ignorant of those arguments before even setting out or to simply ignore them. In either case, the debate is pointless. The only place it is not is when nonsensical views are impressed upon school districts. Rather than, like Hitchens, trying to argue that all religion is ridiculous, efforts ought to be directed towards saving children from the quackery of intelligent design as a scientific theory.